California's non-compete ban (see jhallenworld's post on the issue) is huge. California also bans "we own your side projects" clauses, which is major. Even if, on technicalities, the states may not be very different, the perception is strong enough to scare people into California, a state that otherwise wouldn't have more than weather and inertia.
One of my posts is already linked here, by mwhite, and my perception hasn't changed. I don't see progressivism in Boston companies. I see smart people but old thinking. Then again, the old thinking (reinvented using fratty Young Republican types who get funded) is invading the Valley.
I'm glad to see that Boston is taking on Real Technology. That's great. Honestly, if something can be run by Lucas Duplan or Evan Spiegel, it probably shouldn't be done and it certainly shouldn't be funded at the expense of something legitimate. All that said, one of my gripes with Real Technology (and with Boston) is that there tends to be a militant PhD Bigotry in it. I get that advanced degrees are more common than pigeons out there, but it's a bit irksome to be treated like a junior just because one doesn't have an doctoral degree.
I mean, look, I'm not without cognitive ability. If I weren't a public figure, I could lie and say I was a Stanford PhD in CS and would easily pull it off. Almost everyone would believe me (except for Stanford CS graduates, who could call me out on campus specifics or professors). I have zero interest in lying about my background or history; my point is that I'm smart enough that I could get away with it and hold up. So the lack of a credential shouldn't matter, yet I've had more than one Boston company (when interviewing with them, in the past) tell me that I wasn't a real data scientist or a real quant because I didn't have a PhD. Never mind that I am so much smarter than the person who set these little rules in place that I could claim that I invented the letter "Q" and they'd believe me.
Real Technology can afford PhD Bigotry now because there isn't much of it and (unlike the consumer web space, which is mostly stupid and product-driven but takes more chances on people) it can be picky, so long as it doesn't try to expand. But these academics and ex-academics need to realize that if they want to be relevant again instead of falling into another AI Winter, they've got to drop the pedigree bigotry.
Ok, that last rant has more to do with technology in general than with Boston. I guess I'm here to say that I'm very glad to see Boston's high valuation applied to substance getting it some press. I want Boston's tech scene to succeed. Anything that can compete with the Valley deserves unwavering support. In order to do so, however, it has got to enter the 21st century.